For example, the Pokémon availability. Way over exaggerated just how many Johto Pokémon are kept until Kanto, especially if you're talking about HGSS, which only gatekeep *three* of them, with plenty of trainer battles present for you to catch them up in level anyway. Tama Hero's newest video mostly aligns with my thoughts.
I checked, and the following Johto Pokémon are Kanto-only in HG/SS: Pichu, Sneasel, Houndour/Houndoom, Porygon2, Elekid (outside of using the Pokéwalker), Blissey and Suicune. That’s eight. I think you must have missed some of them.
I don’t know what issues other people have with the availability of the Johto Pokémon in the Johto games, but for me, the fact that some Johto Pokémon can only be found in Kanto is just a part of the problem. The other big issue is that several of the Johto Pokémon are difficult to find in Johto itself. Some have extremely low encounter rates. Yanma, Snubbull, Qwilfish and Remoraid have a 1-3% chance of appearing outside of Swarms, and Swarms are post-game only in HG/SS. Others that can be found at similar rates are Steelix, Chinchou and Corsola, but there are no Swarms for them (though Chinchou and Corsola can be found at higher rates with the Super Rod in the post-game). Then there are other Pokémon which have somewhat higher rates, but are still rare and only appear in one or a few areas, notably Shuckle, Marill, Murkrow, Misdreavus, Mantine, Skarmory and Smeargle. There’s also Slugma, which is
technically available before Kanto, but it requires you to know how to get one in the first place, which is not possible without a guide.
I think it is okay if a region has one or a few Pokémon which are rare or difficult to find, but I think Johto simply has way too many. It is as if Game Freak deliberately made the Johto Pokémon as hard to find as possible, which is a questionable design choice. That might have been acceptable to an extent in G/S/C, but it is really something that should have been fixed in HG/SS.
Another unpopular opinion (though it's not entirely an opinion per se, more of a preference) is that you really don't need to grind in Pokémon games in the first place, not for the main story anyway. You certainly can if you want but I've decided to no longer do it in my playthroughs, and I actually prefer it. Even using gen 2 Johto for an example, you can comfortably beat the entire game, including Red, without grinding once. In fact, Red in gen 2 is made to be beaten underleveled.
I agree that you don’t necessarily
need to grind in the games (but it is nice if you are at least given the option to grind). When I replayed Crystal on 3DS VC two years ago, I beat the E4 when my team (6 Pokémon) was in their lower to mid 40s. I didn’t reach level 50 until the end of Kanto, and I beat Red with my team in their mid-50s. That’s not to say it was all easy, but it was definitely possible. When I played HG/SS, my teams were at level 60 or slightly below when I was at the end of Kanto. Which is still far too low after having gone through two whole regions, but I was still able to beat Kanto without grinding. Not that I could have grinded even if I wanted to.
Which gets us to my next point. Even if you don’t need to grind in Johto (or in Pokémon in general), I think the games should at least give you the option to grind if you want to. And this is my personal biggest issue with the Johto games: the lack of good training spots. When I played Crystal two years ago, I noticed how there were no good ways to train once you had gotten to a high enough level, so I basically just gave up training my team. HG/SS has a similar issue. The wild Pokémon in Kanto are far too weak to give any good training, and since you can’t rebattle trainers in any good way, training against them is out of question as well. I know that PokéGear rematches exist, but they are a terrible rematch system since you need to know which trainers can be called for a rematch at specific times. When I completed the Pokédex in HG/SS, I had to make a list of which trainers to rebattle and at which times they were available. It worked, but it was extremely inefficient compared to other training methods, like the VS. Seeker in D/P/P or the Nimbasa Stadiums in Gen 5. I think the PokéGear rematches in HG/SS are nothing but an example of bad game design, they are a bad rematch system and a bad way to train Pokémon in general.
